


The Boy From Juvie

by PyroKlepto



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, but the others make brief cameos, i have no apologies, mainly it's Mick, time was fucked up and now everything is going to hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 15:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10363347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyroKlepto/pseuds/PyroKlepto
Summary: Some say that you never know the impact a person has on you until they're gone. Sometimes, you are fortunate enough to never experience that - unless time itself is altered.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from gliderofgold on Tumblr: "Alternate ending + what would change in mick's life if he couldn't save len his first day of juvie"
> 
> Major trigger warning for this drabble. It includes some pretty intense themes including but not limited to death and drug overdose.

_he had been in juvie for about three weeks now. right from the start, he had hated both being locked up and the rest of the kids here. stupid kids who had been playing at being tough and ended up getting caught, or druggies who didn’t know when to quit, or psychopaths plain and simple who were here because they were crazy enough to kill but hadn’t gone far enough to be tried as adults._

_a few kids - mostly the ones who had made mistakes or been framed, and weren’t really the sorts who needed to be here at all - tried to make friends. mick avoided them. a part of him had wanted the company. but the rest of him knew that he wasn’t on their level - he wasn’t sure what level he was on, but ‘guilty by association’ wasn’t his. he figured he was somewhere just below the psychopaths._

_but then, what did he know?_

_so he kept to himself, ignoring shouts - most meant to annoy or sting - from others in the yard during their allotted outdoors time. there were a bunch of new kids now; a group had been shipped in the day before._

_it was one of the new kids he saw being dragged toward the space between the guard tower and the shed where tools for labor were kept; out of sight, away from prying eyes._

_something didn’t sit right. especially knowing that the band of boys he had seen were known for being the more sadistic ones._

_normally, mick wouldn’t meddle. normally, he’d mind his own damn business. it was why he hesitated at all, looking toward the guard tower, toward some of the security details wandering around, wondering if they would do anything. no one seemed to notice._

_so mick rose to his feet, slipping in between two chatting inmates and made his way to where he had last seen the other boys vanish._

_they had a shiv. there was blood. he couldn’t tell whose it was, but he knew it belonged to the boy they had cornered; a slim thing with short dark hair, silent even despite the attack, though struggling to get away._

_mick jumped in without thinking. he wasn’t sure how he managed to hold his own until the guards heard the racket and came to drag everyone apart, but he managed to escape with only a few lacerations._

_he turned to make sure the new kid was okay, but he was already being carried away by guards. he didn’t have a chance to ask before he was pushed away._

_the new kid wasn’t there in the yard the next day, or the next, or the next. mick finally managed to get a hold of one of the guards he had seen that day, to ask him what had happened._

_“who? oh, leonard snart? yeah, i’m sorry, kid, he didn’t make it.”_

_mick didn’t know why it hurt so much to hear that a kid he had never even known the name of was dead. but it did._

_it hurt a lot._

~~

Mick scratched at the back of his neck, tuning out the rest of the crew. They were on about something or another, their next mission or their last mission or maybe what was for dinner that evening. He didn’t care.

He paused, brow furrowing as he felt a strange tingling sensation that started inside his head and spread slowly down his spine and through his arms. He glanced around, looking to see if they had started to time jump without warning - no, the rest of the crew stood around rambling.

Mick shook his head slightly, setting his jaw and rubbing at the side of his face, trying to chase away the sensation. He hadn’t had a drink that night, so he wasn’t buzzed, but this felt similar… and familiar, somehow. Like some sort of sense of deja vu. 

The sensation began to grow worse, and Mick tried to form coherent thoughts; tried to figure out what was happening. He didn’t manage.

~~

_he had been out of juvie for a year now. then in prison for a few more. none of it had changed anything about life._

_mick still set things on fire. still stole. still wandered the streets of one city, then another, then another. whenever the police went after him, he fought them off or hid and ran when he could, leaving and going to another place._

_all he ever had on him was a thick drab-green coat, a bottle of lighter fluid, and matchboxes stuffed into every single pocket. he owned nothing else, and didn’t bother finding a place to live - he didn’t need to settle down when the police would only catch him eventually._

_he spent most nights wondering what his parents would think of him now. knowing that they would be disappointed, horrified that their ‘angel child’ had become something so much more akin to the fires of hell._

_After years of it - of aimless drinking, of wandering the city to sleep under overpasses or to break into buildings on the rainier nights to sleep there, of avoiding human contact at all times if he could…  
_

_he fire could only bring him so much comfort. after years of nothing but the fire giving him solace, and nothing to chase away the shadows of guilt and the weight on his heart…_

_it wasn’t hard to knock one of the local dealers out and take his stash. it was even easier to find a place where no one would find him, an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. no one would get there in time. not that anyone would care enough to try._

_covering the two-floor house in a trail of lighter fluid served to go without a hitch. setting a match andn watching bright flames roar to life, snaking throughout the house until the darkness had been lit up with a golden-red glow felt right. it wouldn’t burn down for an hour or two yet; he had been careful with where he poured the lighter fluid. it gave him time to finish the rest of the thoughts hissing through his head._

_and going through with his plans, leaving empty plastic bags and the needles strewn around, was possibly the easiest thing he had ever done._

~~

Mick didn’t have much time to think, let alone speak, before his muscles seized up and he lost his balance, toppling to the floor and landing on his hands and knees. He could hardly hear the rest of the crew’s panic over the racing of too-quick heartbeats in his ears.

Hands clenched into tight fists as his heart rate spiked to a dangerous level. He could very faintly hear someone - Ray - trying to ask him what was wrong.

What was wrong… what _was_ wrong? What was happening… he didn’t know… didn’t understand… 

Mick curled in on himself, his body working in overdrive to pump blood through his veins and his head a muddled tangle of broken thoughts and frantic words that never made it to his lips. Hands were on him, trying to turn him over, trying to find some sort of injury, but every touch felt like burning coals.

Somehow, he knew he was dying. He just didn’t know why or how.

 

“Rory? Rory!” Jax was the first to speak when they all turned to see Mick fall to the floor, convulsing as though his body was no longer his own. He ran over, followed closely by Ray and Stein - the scientists, the ones most likely to know what was happening.

They didn’t. Searching hands found no injuries. It was difficult to get Mick to stop thrashing, and terrifying to see him, gasping for breath, eyes shut tight, hands grasping blindly - for help, for something they couldn’t see, they didn’t know.

Red marks were starting to spread along his wrists and his forearms. Ray, panicked, ghosted his hands across the marks, almost like bruises but redder. “What’s happening?” He turned to look to the captain, whose face had gone pale as a sheet. “Rip?”  
~~

_mick lay down on his back when it had all been done. flames were engulfing the house now. he could hardly breathe through the smoke and the pain and the chemicals rushing through his system._

_that was okay. on the surface, he was panicked. deeper down, he wasn’t sure he felt anything but peace._

_everything would be over soon._

~~

Mick couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t do much of anything. The pain was nearly unbearable, and he knew what it was now. He didn’t know how it had happened, didn’t know why, didn’t know what had been done.

But he recognised the sharp pain in his wrists, and he recognised the burning sensation against his skin, and the cloudy haze overtaking his mind like a buzz but something many times worse.

He tried to speak, but no sound came out.

And he realised that he was afraid. A name wanted to fall from his lips, the same name he had spoken many times before the few times he was this afraid.

The fear grew more intense when he realised he couldn’t remember that name.

 

“Gideon?” Rip looked up toward the ceiling. “Gideon, what is happening?”

“Mr. Rory is dying, captain. Someone has altered his timeline, and he is suffering the effects.”

A beat of heavy silence. And then Ray called out, his voice shaky as he kept trying to calm the man convulsing in front of him, hands pushing down on his shoulders, brushing against his forehead, trying to think of something, anything that could help. “What can we _do_ , Gideon?”

“I’m afraid that unless you go back and alter the timeline again - perhaps causing even worse aberrations - that there is nothing you can do.”

~~ 

_everything was fading now. flames were spreading._

_the pain had either gone away or made it so that he was too numb to feel it. mick lay surrounded by a ring of fire. and despite wanting to take comfort in the glow until he could no longer see it, he couldn’t seem to stop thinking…_

_why was he thinking of the boy from juvie…?_

~~ 

Mick went still, finally, his body numb or too exhausted to keep moving except for the faint twitching of his limbs. 

He couldn’t think. Except for one thought that he couldn’t seem to keep from clinging to. A slim boy, with short dark hair and bright blue eyes… who was he? Mick felt he should know. Felt that it was important to know.

But he couldn’t remember.

 

“What’s happening to him in the past that’s causing this, Gideon?” Rip’s voice was tight as he paced tight circles, hands clenched into fists at his side. Jax came running back from the medbay, carrying an armful ofo things Stein had asked for.

“According to the timeline altered, in 1991, Mick Rory robbed a drug dealer of his ware, and retreated to a farmhouse, where he set fire to it before overdosing and using a ra–”

“What can we _do about it_?” Stein snapped, even as he sorted through the medkit, trying to find something to undo the effects of whatever was happening.

“Nothing, unless we alter the timeline.”

Mick wasn’t moving much at all now, save for faint tremors as his breathing grew slower and more irregular.

“What caused this, we can go back and try to change it!” Jax protested, standing anxiously nearby, hands wringing.

“Judging by the rest of the timeline, in 1986, Mick Rory was sent to juvenile detention. Three weeks after ending up there, he tried to save a young boy who had just arrived from an attack by the other inmates–”

~~ 

_the flames were close enough to bring heat to his skin now, the smoke thick enough to drift overhead._

_mick could feel himself fading, and he was never more grateful for the darkness that swept in and shut out all his thoughts._

_he clung to the image of dark hair and blue eyes - why? - until the last beat of his heart and the last breath he took._

~~

Mick couldn’t hear anything through the fog in his head and the slowing heartbeats in his ears. The panic had ceased to exist now, replaced with no will or energy or life to do much of anything but lie there, hands clenched into fists.

The darkness began to rush through, washing over him in waves.

And still the image of dark hair and blue eyes… and then someone older; the same eyes, but years later… who… why… 

 

“–the boy was Mr. Snart, and because Mr. Rory failed to save him, they never escaped together. Without Mr. Snart to keep him grounded, he lost control of his faculties and the taking of his own life was the result. It seems that without Leonard Snart, Mr. Rory does not live long.”

Gideon fell silent. Before anyone could speak, Ray let out a frantic sound.

~~

_from ashes the soul of the fiery boy was born. to ashes it returned._

~~  


" _without leonard snart..._ "

Darkness… the blue eyes vanished… 

Who was Leonard…? 

__………_ _

_"guys. guys…_  
_he–he stopped breathing…"_


End file.
